It's Always Sunny at Summer Heights High

After a long hiatus, I have resumed blogging alongside my second batch of Writer's Craft students. Right now we're about to embark upon a short "Writing for the Media" unit (within a larger fiction unit) and I'm going to be showing an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for what I consider to be impeccable writing. This show is offensive--there is no denying that. But the writers seem to push the boundaries of what is 'tasteful' not to serve some kind of political agenda, but to maintain a spectrum of creativity that allows them to experiment with their writing in ways that avoid cliches and challenge conventional comedy styles. The show centres around four frenemies (two of whom are fraternal twins) who work together and co-own a bar. I would describe the show as Seinfeld-on-crack, with characters who aren't so much 'imperfect' or 'immoral' as amoral, outrageously self-centered pricks with an embarassingly flawed worldview who make their Seinfeld counterparts look like a clique of Girl Guides. It is worth watching for those who don't demand realism in their TV-viewing experience: each episode stands alone and there is no follow-up explanation or resolution, for example, after two of the characters become crack-cocaine addicts in order to qualify for welfare. The next episode simply begins anew as if nothing outlandish ever happened. This kind of postmodern viewing is an acquired taste, but the experimental style makes any absurdities well worth it.

Oh, and it's got Danny Devito as the twins' equally effed father--or, not their father. You have to watch to figure that one out.

p.s. I didn't end up showing this show to my class: I may, but I haven't yet.

Also, I initially intended to write about Summer Heights High as well here, but clearly lost focus--hence the confusing title. Summer Heights High, if you haven't already seen it, is pretty much a gift to all teachers who can relate to the overzealous but preoccupied teacher who is busy lamenting the loss of his former professional glory; the behaviourally-challenged but lovable (and hilarious!) at-risk student; and the sixteen-going-on-thirty-year-old teenaged girl who (thinks she) knows everything, especially how extraordinary she is. Watch it.

Fantasy vs. Realism

My friends are over tonight to watch Entourage together but, leading into it is the vampire show True Blood, which seems (upon first impression) little more than Twilight-meets-Showgirls-meets-Trailer Park Boys. I have never liked the fantasy genre. In fact, I wield a pre-existing determined, almost arrogant bias and--dare I say it?--hatred toward it. Some might call me a cynic or, in this case, perhaps even a buzzkill, because I'm just not that into a show that includes zingers such as "fucktard" and--whispered in a smouldering vampire voice--"we just fucked like only two vampires could," not to mention the consistent use of more double negatives than I care to count. I find the show laughable, but not hilarious enough to actually be entertaining. Plus, if there is one thing I hate more than fantasy, it's the cliched southern tale of benevolent white trash struggling against bigotry and their own set of inner demons--in this case, raging bloodlust.

And then there's Twilight--but Entourage will be on soon and I don't have time to get into my loathing of Stephanie Meyer and her Mormon claptrap.

No, I am a wholehearted realist. I went to see Louis CK last night at the Just for Laughs festival in Toronto. CK's bits don't include hypotheticals and he doesn't rely upon cheap puns or cliches to get a laugh. Instead, he laments his volunteer position at his daughters' elementary school where he tells a little girl that he doesn't "give a shit" about the little boy who used a "bathroom word" because she isn't his kid and he doesn't love her. Now that I can relate to.

What irks me

Every morning I watch the CBC with Heather Hiscox as I'm getting ready for the day. Every morning the CBC plays the exact same cycle of commercials. And every morning I find myself cringing when the 'Immunity FX' commercial plays, asking me: "Do you live healthy?" What gets me here is that live is a verb, which means that to be grammatically correct, it should be modified by an adverb, not an adjective. Thus, healthy should be healthily. Apparently this has become a trend in dumbed-down advertisements as researched in the magazine Mental Floss, which questioned whether we have witnessed the death of the adverb. As an English teacher and concerned member of the human race, this irks me.

And you know what else gets me? Plagiarism. Upon reading the Mental Floss article on the death of the adverb, I stumbled across a Boston Globe article on the same subject, written four years ago. I didn't see immediately that the magazine author had credited his newspaper counterpart for taking some of his words and using them verbatim. Upon a more careful reading, however, I saw that I had been mistaken. However, the brief interlude in which I mistakenly thought I had found a real-live version of plagiarism, outside of the microcosm of my classroom, I was both elated and incensed--elated because I had grand visions of busting this alleged plagiarist for being a complete phony in the writing world; incensed because I have dealt with plagiarism enough times to make me want to smack the culprit for wasting my time and insulting my intelligence. I take it very seriously--maybe a bit too seriously, as Lars pointed out as he mocked me in an exaggeratedly nerdy voice, finger wagging, "police, police, I have found an online plagiarist!"

Another so-called pet peeve of mine may, admittedly, seem absurd to some, but I will call it 'unintentional understatement'. Case in point: I have a mixed classic rock CD that I made years ago and have recently rediscovered. There is a ridiculously powerful, spine-tingling live version of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child (Slight Return), known to many as his magnum opus. Upon finishing with his final glorious guitar riff, a British woman in the audience is heard shouting in her hackneyed English accent "Ohhh, that was reeeeeally niiii-ce!" WTF? Seriously? You just sat and listened to JIMI-EFFING-HENDRIX play and "really nice" is your most fitting description? I hate this woman. Every time I listen to this song in the car, I have to be careful to skip to the next song before I hear her idiotic and exaggeratedly mundane comment, which ends up coming across as more insulting than had she said nothing at all.

Relatedly, I saw an episode of the HBO show US of Tara recently, and upon seeing his love interest in a wedding gown (which she was wearing before she was left at the altar by another man, a cliche I am willing to overlook here) he told her she looked "pretty." A woman in a wedding gown does not want to hear that she looks "pretty." Beautiful, extraordinary, stunning, exquisite. Any of these would do. A woman will take pretty when she is going out the door to work, or as a description of her in a photograph--but not in a wedding gown. I'm not suggesting that the unintentional understater make a concerted effort to suddenly start exaggerating everything--that would also be annoying and come off as disingenuous--but a little more carefully planned feeling and articulation of one's statements would be appreciated.

That's all for now.

Another school year bites the dust

My life is--and will continue to be, for the next twenty or so years--measured by seasons. Accountants count their years according to the annual tax season. Healthcare workers record each new cold and flu season. Retailers and markets tally each Christmas season as another one comes and goes.

My year begins in September, of course, as it has since I was not quite four years old. Every year Thanksgiving just serves as a reminder that we have a looooong way to go before we can take an extended breather. I notice the holiday season, of course, but it doesn't have any added significance other than a short break from work and a reunion with family and friends, who I seem to backburner every time a new school year begins and I forget how to manage my busy time after a relatively lackadaisical summer. I barely blink as March Break comes and goes, a pause that is more like a teaser than an actual holiday, since it is spent catching up on marking and lesson planning. May 2-4 weekend reminds us that our lives are once again soon to change, as they do every year, but we soon forget when we return to school and try desperately to get some of our most apathetic students to care half as much about earning a credit before the end of June as we do for them. And finally, just like the year before, the end of another school year bites the dust.

This one will be a particularly difficult one for me. As I have mentioned before, this time of year is always bittersweet. I really need and feel I somewhat deserve the break offered by my summer holidays, but I will miss some of my students terribly. That might sound pathetic or weird to some people; technically, students are considered "clients" or customers by the school board, and our job is to simply deliver curriculum expectations in a safe and equitable classroom environment. But here is where it gets confusing: our job is also to act "in loco parentis," which means to act in place of parents. So we are to act simultaneously like business people--salespeople hocking the product of education--and family members watching over our young as they move through a significant stage of life under our care.

I take this responsibility to heart. Our teachers' union warns us not to come into physical contact with a student. But if one of my students cries, I offer them a hug, as I hope any decent parent would. And I will likely keep in touch with several of them--the ones I feel are people who could use an advocate in life, or just the ones whose company I genuinely enjoy.

I don't want to be BFFs with my students, but I like the idea that a student would graduate and mature to be the type of person that I would like to see or hear from again. There is comfort in knowing that as my years come and go, measured by each passing June, and my students--also my clients and my pseudo-children--move on in life, that a few will have had a close enough connection to keep in touch. Otherwise, what type of businessperson/parent am I?

Apparently I'm a jerk

My niece, Camryn, "performed" in her first-ever dance recital this morning, though I think both "dance" and "recital" are misnomers. The kids neither danced nor did they recite; instead, they stood awkwardly on stage, sometimes waving to a mom here or a grandpa there, staring like the proverbial deer in headlights and occassionaly looking into the wings to watch their instructor desperately prompt them on--but of course to no avail. Everyone around me laughed, applauded, and oohed and aahed their approval of what they seemed to believe was a display of intrinsic cuteness but what I can only describe as incompetence. These kids sucked. Even Camryn. At least she smiled, and walked on her tip-toes; but her routine, overall, sucked. After "working" for the past two months they accomplished nothing besides forcing 200 family and friends to wake up at 8:00 am on a Saturday morning.

Oh, and one girl somehow mastered the art of simultaneously picking her nose, scratching her behind, and looking up at the ceiling--a child prodigy.

This experience was a fine contrast to last night, where I witnessed another form of "dancing" altogether: hopelessly awkward--and hopelessly hormonal--teenaged boys stood with their knees shoulder-width apart and proceeded to uncomfortably rock back and forth, as if trying to maintain balance in a canoe. Apparently it's called "grinding." It was a sorry sight indeed--but at least more entertaining than the atrocity I witnessed this morning.

Teaching

I was at a friend's wedding shower today and met some other teachers who work all over Hamilton and Halton. We chatted about how some teachers don't really seem to like their jobs; in fact, some actually appear to hate teenagers, or to hate the act of standing up and actually teaching stuff.

I said to one of the women I met, Melina, that I honestly can't believe some days how great my job is. I get paid to laugh at the goons in my Writer's Craft class. I get paid to travel to Italy and to see 37 students' faces the first time they explore the sloping streets of Assisi. I get paid to work with the Model United Nations club students who will, undoubtedly, change the world we live in and improve people's lives in tangible ways. I get paid to be surrounded by youthful energy and students like Haakim Nainar or David Yoon exchanging lines from my favourite TV shows with me. I get paid to read original works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that few other people may ever be exposed to.

I always feel nostaglic at this time of year. I have been teaching at least two grade 12 classes every year since I began at Westdale four years ago, and I always--ALWAYS--cry at graduation. It's always my finest hour: smudged mascara, puffy eyes and sniffling. Watch for me at grad, kids; I'll be the classy broad sobbing in the corner.

The Death of Embarassment or the Resurgence of Anxiety?

I was just reading an article in an online journal called In Character. The article, by Christine Rosen, laments what she perceives to be the death of embarassment in North American society--from people getting laser teeth whitening in the middle of a shopping mall to people obnoxiously cuddling and making out all over the place. She cites other journalists' studies which blame social networking sites like facebook, online sharing sites like youtube, and reality television for our collective desensitization to embarassing situations and thus our subsequent ability to up the ante of our own personal tolerance for embarassment.

What she fails to acknowledge, however, is how contrived all of these media actually are in the first place. On facebook, people's profile pictures, status updates and comments are carefully constructed (for example, tilt head slightly to the left, hold camera at appropriate distance from head, and try to appear natural, as if the webcam just happened to snap your image without your consent). On Jersey Shore, the producers cast the eight bronzed shore dwellers, make suggestions to them for how to behave, tempt them with copious amounts of booze, and continue filming even when things escalate far beyond the level of ordinary embarassment to which the rest of us are accustomed. When Snooki "fist fights" a group of girls who show up one night on their patio, it is difficult to feel actual embarassment for her because I know how fake the experience is in the first place and how pride, the antithesis of embarassment, is Snooki's primary emotion. Garnering attention is her objective, and thus it would be a waste of my own feelings of embarassment for her.

With the alleged death of embarassment, why do so many of us suffer from anxiety, whihc seems, at times, like an extreme and preemptive version of embarassment? We are so excessively worried about what others will think or say about us that we have panic attacks before leaving the house. Hm.